Okay, guys. This is it. This is the last chapter. I'm going to ask everyone to take a few deep, calming breaths as I run screaming through the streets of my neighborhood.
...
Okay, back.
Hooooooo... Okay, okay, I'm good, I'm fine, I'm cool...
Okay, there's not much more to say, I guess, except:
On with the chapter!
Being afraid of heights was not the best thing when flying hundreds of feet over the Atlantic Ocean in a battery not designed to contain passengers.
As such, it was half an hour before I remembered.
"Bentley," I croaked out, my tongue sticking to the top of my dry mouth. I cleared my throat and raised my head. Sly's arm fell away as I pulled off my backpack, opening a nearly invisible pocket just behind the straps and pulling out a small laptop. "I managed to grab this before Bison's guys ransacked the place."
I'd never seen Bentley move so fast. "Kaia, you're an angel." He said, grinning widely as he took the laptop, opening it and gently dusting off the screen.
"You have intel in that thing, Bentley?" Sly asked, nudging his friend with a foot.
"Yes, I was actually researching Arpeggio before our last heist." Bentley said, pulling up a picture and showing it to us, "He attended a prestigious boarding school and excelled in all subjects, but was never as physically built as his classmates. He has a pituitary disorder that prevents him from growing. He threw his mind into finding a cure and it wasn't long before the Klaww gang took note of his intellect and brought him aboard as chief inventor."
"And this is the guy who has all the Clockwerk Parts?" The battery pitched and I tensed, grabbing Sly's arm and immediately regretting it.
He said absolutely nothing. He just twisted his arm so he could rest his hand on mine, "Any idea what he's planning, Bentley?"
"Well, given that Clockwerk is more or less the epitome of avian physical perfection, I would assume Arpeggio would be trying to glean some sort of information from the parts. Best case scenario, he just wants to study them. Worst case scenario, he wants to use them to craft his own mechanical skeleton or even worse, reactivate the original." Bentley closed his laptop to save battery. "In any event, it's a safe bet he won't be content to let Clockwerk rest in pieces."
Once the battery was locked into place on the blimp (a harrowing experience for all involved), Bentley, Murray, and I set about refurbishing it to act as a Safehouse. Well, mostly Murray. He was built for hard labor.
'Blimp' wasn't really an accurate term for what this flying structure was. It was held aloft by balloons, sure, but there were six or seven of them interspersed between a medley of metallic gangplanks and engines the size of small houses.
Once we were all settled in, Sly took off to handle recon. We sat in silence, waiting for him to contact us. There was really nothing else we could do, we had no information, so Bentley couldn't start working on a plan.
Unfortunately, when Sly paraglided out to the actual blimp where Bentley had detected a large magnetic field to be, we discovered the worst.
"I… I had no idea they could re-assemble Clockwerk so fast!"
"Calm down, Bentley." Sly was surprisingly good as being reassuring. "He may be in one piece but he doesn't look, you know… alive. Let's stick to the format here. How about some recon photos?"
"Y… you're right." As Bentley gave Sly instructions on what to take pictures of, I eased over from my spot pressed against the wall and peered over his shoulder to the screen of his laptop, seeing what Sly's binocucom saw. A hulking metallic owl with a wingspan of at least two dozen feet took up the interior of the blimp, held aloft by half a dozen steel cables.
"Holy…" My breath left me. Sly had fought that? And won?
"Impressive, isn't he?" Bentley asked drily.
I shuddered, wrapping my arms around my sides, "Impressively terrifying."
He seemed to think this was an apt description, because we sat in silence, waiting for Sly to collect the photos he needed. When the thief made it to the front of the blimp to snatch a photo of Clockwerk from a different angle, Bentley detected voices from a room nearby.
The voices of Arpeggio and…
"Neyla?" he gaped, "Neyla's here too? I can't believe it! She must have been working with Arpeggio all along!"
Sly took pictures of both the young Arpeggio and the traitorous Neyla before Bentley commandeered control of his binocucom.
"I don't need to be in the room to see the writing on the wall. Clearly Neyla and Arpeggio have conspired together to rebuild Clockwerk- and it looks like they're dangerously close to realizing their objective."
The obvious 'but why?' lingered unsaid.
"Look, Bentley. I know it's not your style, but I need a quick plan of attack." I could practically hear Sly's pulse speed up at the thought of meeting the murderer of, literally, his entire clan face to face a second time, "I need you to think of a way, any way, to keep Clockwerk from getting reassembled."
"Well," Bentley's voice wavered, "It looks like those spinning electro-platforms are holding the pieces together. If you can reverse their polarity, they should pull Clockwerk apart…"
It sounded like a good idea… in theory.
Sly pick-pocketed the four patrolling guards, knocked them out silently, and unlocked the control station. Then he somehow managed to defy gravity to reach all of the spinning stations and reverse them one at a time.
As he flipped the last switch, I don't think anyone breathed, waiting for Bentley's plan to work.
Ever heard of Murphy's Law?
Instead of all of the parts flying away from each other, Clockwerk's pieces snapped together and fell the few feet to the floor with a loud 'CRASH!'.
Sly took cover as Arpeggio and Neyla came running out to check on the noise then, for some unholy reason, revealed himself.
"Sly!" I shrieked into the microphone.
"Sly Cooper!" Neyla was surprised for a second, then chagrined, "Of course this would be your doing!"
"Ah, Mr. Cooper!" Arpeggio sounded as casual as if he was having tea with a fellow scholar, "No doubt you believed a reversal would pull the old bird apart, eh? But it seems to have had quite the opposite effect! I'm truly grateful. When fully powered up I'll join myself to its circuits and be born anew!" He was positively beside himself.
"All this because you can't fly... You're pathetic." No more Mr. Nice Sly.
"Immortality! Immortality is what I seek!" Someone has clearly never read Tuck Everlasting. "The other Klaww Gang members were far too short-sighted. They were satisfied using the Clockwerk Parts to their various trivial schemes. But not me, no. I saw them for what they really were- the keys to life eternal!"
"So… what?" This was new, Sly was the one seeking information, "You had Neyla put me on the scent back in Cairo… and then waited while I stole the parts from the other Klaww Gang members… all the while not arousing any suspicion that you were behind it all!"
"I should've seen it." Bentley muttered, his head in his hands, "Neyla was just too convenient."
I reached out, not looking away from the screen, and patted his shoulder, "No one can know everything."
"… was overjoyed when Arpeggio let me toss you in jail, I could finally go after the parts myself." Ugh… just the sound of Neyla's voice made me want to hit something.
"Ah, but acquiring all the parts was only half the equation! … Think, Cooper," now Arpeggio sounded like a teacher, "What kept Clockwerk alive all those years?"
"He was… fueled by his hatred for my family." Sly sounded like he was in the middle of a heavily repressed memory.
The small parrot paid no mind, "Splendid, that's right! Hatred! Putting his gears and wires together was child's play compared to compared with accumulating that much hatred!"
"You can't make people hate." Sly spat.
"Oh, my poor, naïve boy," Geez, how old was Arpeggio? "My meticulous mind has found a way. As your hippopotamus friend will attest, spice consumption makes people both angry and susceptible to hypnosis. The Contessa, hypnotist extraordinaire, devised a way to command people through the use of flashing lights. I've created this blimp to be a massive transmitter of those precise light frequencies… the only problem I faced was finding a suitable source of light waves."
… Oh he did NOT turn one of the most beautiful natural wonders into a tool for evil!
"The Northern Lights! You've been collecting Northern Light energy so you could hypnotize everyone beneath the blimp!" Sly sounded as outraged as I felt.
"Ah, hypnotize those who'd eaten food- covered in illegal spice." My word, did his voice actually go up an octave out of sheer joy? "Thank goodness for Dimitri. Through his nightclub, he got the whole city to consume the spice!"
How could one art forger dope up Paris?
"You're going to Paris to unleash a hypnotic light show of hate… That's outlandishly cruel."
I was struck by the entirely unwanted admiration of the character Sly had to possess to feel so protective of a city that probably wanted his head on a platter.
"Cruel, perhaps." Arpeggio sounded stiff now, like he realized that Sly didn't appreciate his 'scientific endeavors', "But necessary to give Clockwerk his spark of immortality. Ah well, my new body awaits me! Be a dear, Neyla, and keep him covered. Ta-ta!"
He turned his wheeled perch towards Clockwerk and was instantly struck down by Neyla's whip.
"Saw that coming." Bentley and I chorused.
Neyla lept over the struggling form of Arpeggio and looked down on him with disdain, "Stupid Arpeggio. I double-crossed the Cooper Gang, Interpol, and Carmelita… what made you think I wouldn't do the same to you?"
And then Neyla jumped into the shell of Clockwerk.
The metallic bird shuddered and began to stand, eye glowing red.
Arpeggio was still talking. "This is preposterous! You are my protégé, not the next candidate for my immortality! I demand you exit the Clockwerk frame or… OR…!"
I looked away when Clockwerk's massive talons came down on Arpeggio's perch.
That didn't stop Neyla's voice, now semi-electronic from the new form she embodied.
"Behold! Clock-La is born!"
There was a loud crash as she tore out the front of the blimp, leaving Sly standing in a room full of useless machinery and blood-stained feathers.
"As… we all know," Bentley said, not really making eye-contact with anyone in the dead-silent Safehouse, "Things are looking grim. Neyla had joined herself to the Clockwerk frame and the union has produced… 'Clock-La'. She's out and free to terrorize the world."
"This blimp is still in motion to Paris. I can only assume Arpeggio's auto-pilot will activate the hate-hypnosis-light-show. If that happens, there'll be no stopping Clock-La… she'll be immortal. But we still have a chance."
He breathed a silent sigh of relief when Sly straightened up, Murray looked over, and even Kaia glanced up from the little ball she'd formed in the corner. They could all use a little optimism right now.
"In her new form she'll need to draw a lot of energy from this blimp's engines to stay strong. If we can disable all four engines that should be enough to weaken her to a state in which we can attack. Getting at these engines will require all four of us to work together in perfect harmony- yes, even you Kaia." He added to the girl looking at him with wide, nearly-fluorescent eyes.
He turned and faced the gang as an almost tangible air of resolve and determination settled on the room.
"We've pulled off some tough jobs in the past, but they were just the warm-up round compared to what we'll be going through tonight."
I settled the headset, which had been adjusted to fit me, around the crown of my head, "Everyone read me?"
"Gotcha, Jinx."
"Loud and clear."
"'The Murray' is ready for action."
"Alright, let's get this ball rolling. We're gonna run this thing like a relay race on two tracks. Sly and Bentley, you're up first…"
Bentley's line about 'perfect harmony' in the briefing had not been an exaggeration. Sly had to pull the first half of a job with Bentley, then run to do the same with Murray, then meet up with Bentley who'd just finished his job to pull another, then break off to pull his own and Murray and Bentley had to meet up to complete a fourth… It was like swinging the trapeze with an invisible partner. You couldn't see them, but you had to trust that when you let go, they'd catch you before gravity claimed your life.
That was where I came in. I was coordinating all of these jobs from inside the Safehouse, urging someone along when they had a deadline to meet, helping them navigate the maze of multi-leveled pathways to shave precious seconds off travel time. The jobs themselves were things they'd pulled millions of times- pickpocket them, bomb that… I was basically just a time manager.
I don't think my heart rate dropped below 140 the entire time. At any given time I could look up, try to admire the multi-colored clouds for one split second of peace, and see Clock-La swooping down on something I couldn't see. Every single time I panicked, thinking it was one of the guys, and had to double check the screens to know that they were fine.
Then I was pinged by a fourth frequency.
My first instinct of 'well that can't be good' was overridden by my curiosity.
"Er… is this working? Cooper gang, can you read me? I KNOW you're on that blimp!"
I almost fell out of my chair, "Carmelita?"
"Kaia? … Listen, I know this is weird, but I need you to get me in contact with the Cooper gang's tech specialist."
"Uhh…" Bentley walked through the door and took off his hat, wiping sweat from his brow. I immediately vacated my chair, "It's for you."
"In an unexpected windfall," Bentley had set up the projector one last time, "I've been contacted by Inspector Fox over the short-wave radio. She's well aware of the dire situation we all face if Clock-La becomes immortal and has agreed to join forces with us so that we can destroy the robotic bird."
"That Carmelita," Sly said, a sliver of his usual cheer in his voice, "Always coming through when you least expect it."
"The only catch is that she is unable to locate this blimp on her radar. In order to help her hone in on our signal, we'll need to boost the strength of four local radio towers. Once Inspector Fox is in range, she'll take one of us aboard to act as a tail gunner in a dogfight against Clock-La. This is it, we don't have time for another plan. We're almost over Paris and if that hate-hypnosis-light-show goes off…" the turtle took a look around at our grim faces. "Well, you know the story."
Sly and Carmelita had been fighting Clock-La for what seemed like ages.
Neyla had apparently adjusted to her new body very well, having already learned to use the vast arsenal of weapons at her disposal.
Bentley, Murray, and I stood staring at the windows of the Safehouse, watching the fight in silent, morbid fascination, knowing that if our friends lost, that was it. We would die. It was all just a matter of when.
Bentley's laptop battery had finally given out, so we had no way of observing the battle from Sly's point of view. We could hear them, though, through the earbuds. Carmelita's backhanded compliments and Sly's witty retorts, all the while the stream of fire never let up.
And then the space behind Clock-La's head lit up like a Texas Spinner, shooting sparks all around and we heard Carmelita say, "You should've been a cop! That was some terrific shooting!"
Clock-La crashed into the middle of the pathways, the central platform that held the blimp together. It started falling apart and I panicked when, looking up, I saw Clock-La still flying… right towards the Safehouse.
"Sly," Bentley was already talking. "Sly! We've got a serious problem here. Clock-La's looking mighty upset- and I think she's going to take it out on us!"
I tackled Bentley to the ground and Clock-La reached us, but instead of colliding with us like I thought she was going to, metal talons punched through the top of the battery and with a hair-raising 'screeeeech´ the bolts holding it in place gave way.
We were thrown about like loose luggage in an airplane. Bentley was torn from my grip and I landed on Murray. The table and chairs hit all of us at some point and I, for one, was not sure which way was up.
"I'm coming guys, hold on!"
Sly's reassurance did not do much for me. I'm not going to lie, I was petrified. This was more or less my worst nightmare- trapped in a container hundreds of feet above the Atlantic Ocean at the mercy of someone who wanted me dead. That combined three of my worst fears into a horrible, inescapable reality.
"I'm scared, Sly." I heard Bentley whimper, "Hurry."
Silently, I agreed.
The battery suddenly bottomed out underneath us and there was a split second of weightlessness where I dazedly thought 'Wheee, I'm flying', before Murray of all people realized what was happening.
"Oh no, we're diving!"
I hit the top of the battery, then the bottom. Someone's elbow drove into my gut and something landed on me and I heard a snap and a scream. Then I realized the scream was me and the snap was my arm.
For a few seconds, the chaos subsided and all I could hear was the roar of air in my ears and all I could feel was the lancing pain and surrounding heat in my forearm, like someone had replaced my bones with fiery pokers, and all I could see was the red of the inside of my eyelids as my blood pumped hotly behind them.
The battery shuddered and outside the window I saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance. We were in Paris.
Then Clock-La plummeted and I was flying again.
My head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls. Some sort of noise was making its way through the cotton, though.
"… - Kaia! Kaia, wake up! Bentley, what's wrong with her?"
I recognized the voice, so I pried my eyes open, even though I just wanted to turn away from the hand that kept hitting my face, albeit gently.
Oh, hey, it was Sly. I blinked at him blearily, before it registered why it was weird that Sly was crouching over me. I was sitting instantly, my vision turning all sparkly white with the head rush while my arm decided to let me know it wasn't happy with me.
"Please tell me someone got the plate number on that psychotic robot bird." I doubled over, cradling my limp right arm.
Sly chuckled and there was warmth around my shoulders, "See for yourself." I looked up and saw the crumpled heap of Clock-La, sitting on the bank of the Seine river, motionless.
"We… we did it!" I felt his heartbeat from where my shoulder was pressed against his chest, beating so rapidly and furiously that I was surprised he sounded so calm.
"Right on!" Murray roared to the sky.
"It's an emotional moment." It was hard to tell whether or not Bentley was being serious.
I just let my head flop against Sly, "Finally."
Ever heard of O'Toole's Law?
"Die, insects, die!" Clock-La's eyes began to glow again.
"Watch out, that thing's still kicking!" Sly hauled me to my feet and we four booked it away from the lasers that were beginning to break free of Clock-La's exoskeleton.
"How is she still alive?" I panted, feeling lightheaded with pain and exhaustion.
Surprisingly, Bentley answered, "She mentioned something about a hate chip… it sounded like the source of her power."
The gears in Sly's head were whirring away, "If we remove it, she might stop attacking."
"Then let's do a little open-head surgery," Murray pounded his fists together, "I'll pry open that beak so that Bentley can go to town with his bombs."
The proverbial huddle broke and I was quickly surprised by how nimbly Murray managed to avoid the lasers, making his way across the small spit of land where we all stood to crouch by the beak and, true to his word, pry it open.
"I'm up," Bentley said, running over as a hologram of Neyla ranted and raved about something or other. Sly stayed by me, crouched in a position to run over if he needed to, tail waving in precise, irritated sweeps of the air.
There was a small explosion and Bentley freed the hate-chip. He held it up with a triumphant expression, "Let's get out of here! She's about to blow!" Then-
"BENTLEY!"
There was a horrible metallic snap and Clock-La's jaw fell closed. Bentley gave a short, awful yelp of pain from within and was silent.
Despite the fact that we'd been warned that Clock-La was on the verge of an explosion, neither Sly nor I wasted a second in leaping from the top of the battery, dodging lasers as Murray wrestled the metallic beak open a second time to free his reptilian friend.
Bentley's face was twisted into a grimace of intense pain, "Murray, pick me up… I can't walk."
Looking like he was about to cry, Murray gathered the genius turtle in his arms as gently as he could. Then Clock-La started sparking.
"Let's get out of here!"
Carmelita's boot came down hard on the hate-chip, crushing a grid of delicate circuitry like an eggshell.
The strewn, smoking parts of Clock-La aged hundreds of years in seconds, bright silver metal rusting and deteriorating like a time-lapse.
The Inspector and Sly were looking over the remains of Clock-La, being sure they hadn't missed anything that could revive the Cooper clan's curse. I was kneeling on the battery, on level with the unconscious Bentley that Murray held in his arms.
I was blinking back tears, fumbling with the clasps of the armor on the front of his shell. I was trying to get it off so he could breathe a little easier, but I could only use my left-hand and I was hugely right-dominant.
I finally managed to get it undone and slipped it off, placing it on the battery-top next to me. Murray looked at me with bright, watery eyes.
"Do you think he'll be okay?" He asked, lip trembling.
I tried to force a smile, "I'm sure he'll be fine. Bentley's tougher than he looks." I hoped that was true. With his glasses broken and askew, his tongue lolling out the corner of his mouth, he didn't look particularly sturdy. All I could hope was that his shell had taken the brunt of the hit.
"Hands up, Cooper gang. You're under arrest."
I should have seen that coming. Carmelita was far too black and white, it was her nature. Not to mention she still needed to clear her name.
Sly seemed to click into auto-pilot, looking around for escape routes. His gaze landed on us and he seemed to decide something.
"Tell you what, Carmelita." He said, facing her. "You let Murray take Bentley and go, and I'll go with you completely peacefully. No tricks, no trouble."
My jaw dropped. By now, the very idea of Sly behind bars made me nauseous. It wasn't going to be like when the Contessa had him, he wouldn't be going to a secluded estate and Bentley wasn't one hundred percent and ready to break him out.
But what else could he do? He was right; the rest of the gang was in no position for a quick escape.
Carmelita was staring him down, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth; then her gaze flicked over to the unconscious Bentley and crying Murray, then back to Sly, "Alright, Cooper." She turned to them, even as we heard the sound of sirens approaching. "Go, get out of here, hurry."
"I'll be seeing you, Murray." I couldn't think of anything else to say.
He walked away with hunched shoulders, leaving me staring at the pile of gear he and Bentley had left behind. Then it hit me.
It was over. Everything was over. Sly was going to jail, Murray and Bentley were going to be on the run and I would go home.
Home.
For some reason, I couldn't drudge up the feeling of relief I knew I was supposed to have. I could only stare blankly at the ground in front of me.
"This is it, then."
I looked up. Sly had come over and was trying for a grin as he sat next to me. It didn't really reach his eyes.
"How's your arm?"
I swallowed and tried for a smile of my own, "Well, you know, I've always wanted to be ambidextrous. Now I get a chance to learn." I couldn't really inject the light-heartedness that my jest required.
As Murray disappeared around a distant corner, I looked down again, "I'm sorry, Sly."
"What for?" He sounded surprised.
I rubbed at my eyes with my good hand, "It looks like I really was a jinx on your team. It wasn't supposed to end like this, was it?"
"… No. But," he reached around my back, resting his hand on my head and pulling me close for just a moment, "It was fun having you along. And after this, we're due good luck for at least a decade." He sighed and stood, not looking at me as the lights of the approaching cars started to ricochet off the windows of nearby buildings, "Better go let Carmelita cuff me. See you around, Jinx."
My heart jumped in my throat as he took a step away and I knew that I couldn't just let him leave like that.
"Sly-wait!"
I lunged, catching his wrist with my left hand, and he looked back at me, surprised.
… Crap, I hadn't thought this far ahead.
"You should know," The words tumbled out of my mouth, no thought put behind them, "That there's a difference between Stockholm Syndrome and friendship."
THE END
It's okay, it's okay, guys, breathing is good! We- we still have an Epilogue! Okay, it's like, a page long, but there's still an Epilogue to go!
And- and there's the sequel! I'm planning on finishing the sequel before I have to go back to school for the spring semester! It won't be out until some time in September or October, but it's coming, I swear!
Also, I have a little idea to bounce off you guys... It will be a while before the sequel, so I was considering creating a blog for this series, to kind of tide you guys over. It would also be for me to show off, I'd keep you guys up to date with how the stories are going, any plans I have for the series I feel that won't be spoiler-ish, Q&A's (a bunch of you have asked me questions and I'd like to be able to answer them all in a way anyone else with the same question could see), deleted scenes that didn't quite make it into the story, one-shots, artwork, sneak peeks, stuff like that. If I get enough people who say they're interested, I'll probably make the blog and post the link when I put the Epilogue up here in a month or so. So, what do you think?
Also, should you guys decide you like the idea of a blog, I'll do something special for the hundredth reviewer! I'll write a one-shot or get the person who draws all the fanart to draw a picture (I'll bribe her with cookies or something), just whatever the reviewer wants! That's right, this story has almost 100 reviews! That means, if you're an anonymous reviewer, leave an email address where I can reach you to ask you what you want for your prize!
Hooooo, okay, I can't drag it out anymore, I have no more to say. But thank you guys sooooo much for all of your support and kindness throughout this story! I'll be thanking a few specific reviewers in the long A/N that will go after the epilogue, but for now, just know I love all of you guys! Big hug! ((*hugs everyone through the comp*))
Please let me know what you though and God Bless!